


In Heaven and Hell and All That is in Between

by thesnowyswan



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Suicide, POV Robert Sugden, also canon abuse, blink and you'll miss it soulmates, robert turns into a real boy, the angel/demon!au you never wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-14 00:58:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12996372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnowyswan/pseuds/thesnowyswan
Summary: Robert is a dickish demon, Aaron is an aggressive gay angel, but mostly it’s a story about second chances.





	In Heaven and Hell and All That is in Between

**Author's Note:**

> This beast nearly killed me. I started this over the weekend and poured my heart into it since then and I'd like to share it with you all. I hope y'all enjoy it.

_In a world where death is a catalyst, it can change good for better, and worse for ill, or it can change none at all. Even less certain are the bonds that transcend it._

 

Somewhere, long ago.

 

Pain. Lancing, punishing, concentrated solely on his chest, Robert writhes in agony, “Why?”

The thickening gloom doesn’t answer, but it laughs. Darkness spreads, not outside in, but inside out. Robert claws at his clothes, “No! Stop it!”

“Rotten to the core. It’s ya fate.” It’s a man, or the shape of a man. He scrambles, it’s futile, he can’t get up from where he’s fallen. The inky black that pours over him burns and Robert screams. It doesn’t hurt, he realises. It’s taking the pain, making it new. Fire rests in his belly, hot and raging and he feels stronger.

“Wha—”

The man shape grows features and Robert flinches when he touches his chest, his open wound, “Your brother sends his regards.”

Robert’s head drops to the floor, tears suspended from his eyes, he sheds not another tear, his mind racing. He’s dead. He’s dying. He’s something else entirely, he thinks, and his brother damned him to it.

The fire bursts, and Robert doesn’t look back once. Demon in life, demon in death.

 

~*~

 

And somewhere yet longer still.

 

There is no real pain now. It is a plain hurt that doesn’t compare to the throbbing of Aaron’s mental anguish. He finds there’s freedom in how the blood slows, stopping the truth of his pain with it. _Let it end, let it be done_.

There’s softness as he turns his head, a pillowing light as he tries to focus his eyes.

“Not yet.” It tells him, clear like a bell.

He moans as he feels his body consumed by light, “No.”

There’s a weight, heavy on his back, and smoothness, that he tries to reach but the nerves in him feel cut.

“Not yet.” He’s told again, and he fights, his body doesn’t move, but he fights.

 _Let me die_. It would be a kindness.

And he does die, but he is also reborn. He sits on the earth with sloping white wings on his back and he is something else. It’s another thing he didn’t want.

 

~*~

 

Now.

 

Robert slips out of his car, not realising he’d arrived in a place that has its own angel. It’s a sickly-sweet presence, like sugar syrup and self-righteousness. Robert hates it, it sets his teeth on edge and fires up the molten core of darkness that lives inside him like nothing else. He _hates_ angels so much. Pretentious, knobbish sticks in the mud, all of them. Yet, they’re unavoidable. They live on the earth to protect the stupid humans from the likes of him, trying to corrupt and deprave their souls. They bring holy fire and weapons to cut the demons down when they rise up too far, but never truly wiping them out because evil can never truly be vanquished when there is free will. They call it a culling so that humanity has a chance to be better. Robert thinks it’s a crock of shit. Humans are what they are, and that’s their choices as fucked up as they are. Nonetheless, he can’t enter an angel’s territory without having a big to-do. They’ll fight, they’ll talk, they’ll try to stay out of each other’s way. It’s how it is.

However, when he meets the angel in Emmerdale, Aaron Dingle, he wants to laugh. He’s so angry, his feathers roughing up against each other and his brows drawn in. He could almost be a demon.

Robert gets up in his face, trying to ignore the clear water blue of his eyes and jabs his metaphorical soft underbelly.

“You’re not what I thought an angel would be.” He says while laughing haughtily, his fingers ruffling at Aaron’s back. He snarls at Robert’s hand, completely at odds with his heavenly image, and it just burns inside Robert. “How did they make you, huh? You had to be a mistake.”

Aaron slaps his hand away with no small amount of force before he shoves Robert up against the wall behind him, “Don’t matter, what will is if you touch me again.”

It isn’t often that Robert gets a flicker of involuntary brimstone, but his back is entirely up now. He lets his hands heat with unholy fire as he grabs at Aaron’s wrists where they hold him. Aaron drops him like a hot potato and Robert fluidly rolls himself off the wall.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you, flyboy.” He lets his voice drop on the last word, his intent clear: power play initiated. Winner: Robert. Only Aaron doesn’t back off. He places his flat palm on Robert’s chest and shoves him back again. His whole body turning to walk away, his face obscured by his wings.

Robert’s eye catches on the floor, one sole pearlescent feather, tipped in grey is right there for the world to see. If you have an angel feather, you can summon the angel.

With that, his stay just got a lot more interesting.

 

~*~

 

It has always been known that Robert has very poor impulse control, even for a demon, as he sets up a circle for the summoning the next day. He isn’t stupid though, he has a Hell dipped knife, poisonous to all creatures, himself included, if Aaron wants to play hardball, but he’s set up for something else a little less…aggressive.

Aaron doesn’t so much poof into existence so much as there is a flash of light and it’s like he was always there.

Robert takes his chance and yanks several of Aaron’s feathers out as he’s turning around trying to grab at Robert.

“What the f—”

“Pretty sure you’re not allowed to say that.”

Aaron tries to step out of the circle and he hits the invisible barrier, not hard enough to bounce, but he will have felt the current of unholy fire along his angelic nerves.

“Why’d you do this?” He’s angry again, and Robert finds it fascinating. He looks practically itching to get back the cluster of feathers Robert has in his hand, but Robert puts them into a silver gilded box and shuts the lid. Never know when he might need an angel, or Aaron.

“Call me intrigued.”

Aaron’s look says he’d rather Robert be called dead, but he folds his arms and his wings behind himself, the longest feathers just sweeping the floor.

“Don’t they get heavy?” Robert says conversationally. It’s a known fact that an angel’s wings weigh a ridiculous amount and it’s a part of their eternal self-flagellation in the name of God to carry them around.

“No.”

Of course they don’t. Not for Aaron. Robert can’t help that his mouth quirks into a smile, he opens his fridge and gets out a beer.

“You probably don’t drink beer, do you?” Robert can practically taste that he does. Aaron is the antithesis of an angel, practically a human with wings stuck on. There’s a tiny ruffle of feathers and Aaron glares at him, but his eyes catch on the condensing bottle.

“I’m just try’na make friends. New in town n’all.” He offers, and the bottle too.

Aaron scoffs, “You ripped half me back out and have me shoved in an invisible box, you might want to try harder, mate.”

It’s not a no.

“Sorry about that, never know with you angel types.”

“You’re a demon, you can’t ‘ave expected different.”

“True. But isn’t it time one of yours and one of mine made friends?” Robert can’t help but look Aaron up and down, lasciviously. It’s been decades since he’s had a man and Aaron is so well made. He expects an uncomfortable retaliation, but Aaron just stares at him. His eyes flick down to Robert’s groin and back up to his face.

 _Gay then?_ He just can’t believe his luck. A mostly human gay angel who is definitely considering having a cold beer with him and not murdering him. It’s a _good_ day.

In a gesture of good faith, or trying to undo the insult of trapping him, Robert smudges the line of the circle holding Aaron and hands him the beer.

Aaron takes it, and brushes his fingers over Robert’s to do it. Entirely too fascinating is Aaron Dingle, Robert decides, and that’s how it starts.

Aaron sits on Robert’s settee with his beer and listens to him talk, utter shit mostly, but he’s trying to draw Aaron out without much success. He gets up when his beer is done, and Robert stands with him, swaying towards his angelic grace. It should be repulsive to him, all that goodness, but in Aaron it just exudes out like the way power tastes in the rich people, and Robert has always been keen on that.

Robert stops him as he goes to leave out the front door, another idiosyncrasy that tickles Robert, a hand warm on his arm.

“Come over again.”

Aaron takes him in in full this time, from the blonde of his hair to his rich fancy shoes and Robert is flayed. No part of him is untouched and he craves it. He ignores all the warning bells in his head as he dips down and kisses Aaron harshly, shoving his mouth against the angel’s and holding him there with a hand cupping the back of his head. He tastes like warm beer and Robert’s favourite packet of crisps and he wants more, but Aaron pulls away from him. He doesn’t look angry, but his chin is tilted up for a fight. Robert swipes a thumb over Aaron’s bottom lip and lets his hand drop between them.

“Night, Aaron.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he steps outside the door and with another flash of light, he’s gone again.

Robert stands in his own doorway unsure of what really happened here. He came to tease an angel, play on their stereotypical nature, and he’s left with a softness against his lips and an uncertainty about his own desires.

 

~*~

 

It’s no surprise that after that, Robert watches for Aaron. He feels a longing in his gut and he can only answer it. He is a demon after all, slave to his passions. So, he waits in the pub, but there’s no sign of Aaron. He seems to come and go as he pleases without any thought to the other souls in his care. Robert could have ruined every one of them six times over in the time it’s taken him to reappear.

When he finally does, he’s not alone. He’s with a dark haired man, a kind soul if a little simple, and one Robert will never forget.

She looks exactly as she did in his life, soft brown hair and kind eyes. _His sister_. Or at least an approximation of her as the years and generations have passed. Souls repeat, they reconfigure and reassemble into similar outcomes over and over. He knows it, he’s seen it, but _this_. She’s Victoria down to her gold necklace that their mother left her.

Aaron catches him and he frowns. He leaves his friends where they stand and walks over to Robert who is tucked up in an alcove seat.

“What do you want?”

Robert pushes his almost feeling down into his stomach and smiles suggestively to Aaron, “Another drink. In aid of our friendship.”

Aaron’s face is deadpan, Robert can tell how much he thinks of their ‘friendship’, but he’ll do it for the sake of the people of this village. If it will buy one soul deliverance from Robert’s evil.

“Fine. A beer do you?” Aaron turns, and Robert catches his wrist. He turns back and looks down at Robert’s hand.

“Come over, you know where I live.”                                                               

Robert is risking a lot inviting Aaron into his home again, and Aaron doesn’t even look all that impressed by it. It’s a little insulting, but Robert lets it pass when Aaron nods his head. “Fine.”

“Good, see you at 7.” Robert slips past him, but out of sight of Victoria. He doesn’t like the trickle of whatever that drips inside him when he looks at her.

 

~*~

 

7 rolls around, and shockingly, they have a surprising amount in common. Despite their own immortal natures, they have proclivities towards racing fast cars, seeing how they work and unrealistic trivia questions.

“So, after Tom, Dick and Harry, it’s George?” Aaron asks him as he pops his new can.

Robert nods, “Yup.”

“The oldest train line in London is the Metropolitan line.”

He laughs, “Everyone knows that. Metro? Come on.”

Aaron snorts, “Depends on your pub quiz.”

“The Woolie not really it for an all-knowing angel?”

Aaron’s face drops a little and Robert wishes he could take it back. He shoves off his settee and grabs two glasses from his drinks trolley, an arse-y thing to start with, and grabs the whiskey.

“Shot it.” He tells Aaron as he pours him a measure.

There’s a sceptical look, “this is good stuff.”

“I don’t care.” He shrugs, he doesn’t. He can get more.

“It’s a waste.” Aaron swirls the amber liquid, considering it.

Robert sighs, “It’s a good time is what it is. Live a little.”

Aaron obviously doesn’t rate Robert’s version of ‘living a little’, but he does take the challenge of downing the shot. He doesn’t even twitch as it must burn his throat. Robert is more than a little excited by that.

“Another?” Robert offers as he takes his shot.

A lick of his lips and Aaron nods. Robert has to remember for himself that Aaron has big fluffy white wings and goddamn halo because everything about him is a sin. So, he ignores how his stomach drops and pours the liquid in. Aaron waits until Robert has his and clinks their glasses together.

“Cheers.”

Robert smiles, honest and real, “Cheers.”

 

When Aaron finally moves to leave, he’s warm and a little bit fuzzy, and Robert walks him to his front door, his fingers just touching those impossibly soft feathers. Aaron hides them in public, he has to, a slip of reality where they exist and don’t exist, but here, where he’s known, he shares them, unfolded them when they were itching him because of the whiskey.

Aaron leans on his arm against the wall, looking slightly up at Robert, “You’re bad news.”

He chuckles, “You’re not wrong.”

Aaron’s hand is rough when it touches his cheek, Robert looks down at his lips and back up to his impossibly blue eyes.

 _Oh, let him choose this_. Robert’s blood is pumping faster through his veins as he tips into high alert. He doesn’t move a muscle as Aaron licks his lips and pressed them against Robert’s. His other hand comes up and drags Robert down. There’s no tongues, it’s not a kiss to tease, but it is one that wants. Aaron pulls away looking satisfied with himself and Robert wonders if he’ll regret it in the morning.

“You ain’t all bad.” Aaron leaves him with as he pops out again and Robert just stares at the empty space where he was.

 

~*~

Aaron choosing to kiss Robert opens up a chasm between them and it can’t be undone. Every time Aaron pushes back at him for his presence, he knows what the feeling of his soft desire feels like. Any time he gives Robert a shafting look, he knows exactly how he breathes out after a kiss because he’s content.

“ _Aaron_.” Robert teases as he collars him in the doorway coming back from the toilets in the pub. It’s been a couple of weeks after their drinks date and since Robert felt the softness of his lips alongside the scratch of his beard. He’s _lonely_ without it and he pours that into his look.

Maybe it’s one push too many because Aaron shoves him up against the wall and presses into him with his whole body as he does thrust his tongue inside Robert’s mouth. Robert moans around it, dragging Aaron’s hips in tighter, his fingers stiff as he holds him, his nose pressed against Aaron’s cheek as he tilts his head to get deeper inside Robert’s mouth.

“Just shut up will ya?” Aaron tells him when they part. His cheeks are stained, his mouth ruined, and Robert wants to taste more of him. He places his hand high up on Aaron’s back, right between his shoulder blades where his wings would be if he wasn’t hiding them. He gives Robert a full-bodied shudder and falls easily back into another kiss, one of Robert’s design as he spins Aaron round so that his back is against the wall, his wings appearing where Robert’s body hides them.

 _That’s_ what he wants, he decides as he pulls back, Aaron licking his lips and keeping his eyes closed. Robert leaves him with a parting kiss, stroking his hand down Aaron’s side, catching his underlying feathers as he blinks slowly at him, their joint desire making him soft and slow. Submerged inside it, he thinks. He knows he is.

He nods once, Aaron nods back at him and the gap widens a little more. It’s a precipice for both of them now, a black maw that they will fall into with just a heavy breeze because they refuse to stop walking the edge of it.

 _I want you_ burns heavily in both angel and demon fire.

 

~*~

 

It’s strange, but they don’t actually ever clash as an angel and a demon until Aaron feels threatened. He can feel Robert’s influence spreading and he tells him so.

“Whatever you’re doing, stop it.” Aaron warns.

Robert, for once, is entirely unsure of what it is he’s done and shrugs. He doesn’t have anything in the works this week, but Aaron still grabs him by his collar and shakes him, “I mean it, Robert.”

He nods, and his eyes follow Adam and he slides up to Vic and he feels his stomach turn hot with anger. Aaron turns, traces his gaze and lets him go. Neither one says anything more.

 

 

Aaron does come up to him later that day and says simply to him: “Victoria.”

He doesn’t deny it and Aaron nods.

“She’s too good for you, Robert. Leave her be. And Adam’s a good bloke too and you know it.”

 _Not good enough_. If Robert can get into the cracks of his soul, anyone can, and that’s not good enough for Vic.

“He stays away, Aaron. Family is family.”

There’s a moment of recognition from Aaron for the fact that Robert recognises Vic as family. He must have never really putting two and two together before as Robert never gave him any other name but his first. Meaning that he must have thought Robert’s interest was of the damning kind.

In the end, it’s the only ultimatum he ever gives, and Aaron seems to accept it, until he asks, “What if he loves her?”

Robert looks at him blankly, “What’s love?”

 

~*~

 

Despite his admission and general displeasure at Adam’s presence, Aaron still comes around to Robert’s flat to spend time with him. It’s almost like what they have is suspended outside of the reality they live in, the one where they should hate each other.

He’s lying on Robert’s settee, half sleeping, when Robert springs his theory on him, everything he’s accumulated about Aaron in the short time he’s known him. He can’t avoid it now and he thinks Aaron knows it too.

“You’re a suicide, aren’t you?” He’s so impossibly human that Robert knows he was frozen in that life and put into this one. Death never changed him, but delayed him from its grasp.

Aaron sits up though, looking down, his wings almost drooping with him. It’s clear he’s ashamed. After all this time, he still can’t reconcile with the sadness that took his life. That’s why Robert doesn’t agree with angels. He railed against his murder, his catalyst for his demonic transformation, but he knew it fed his power, gave him strength. All Aaron’s knowledge does is sap him of his grace.

“Those people, the Dingles?” The only people in the village Aaron seems to give a damn about.

“They’re my family.” And it’s true. He sees it in Aaron’s brow when he stands with his ‘uncle’. Chastity Dingle is his mother, but she’s also his mother’s descendant.

“You stayed all this time?” He doesn’t ask how much time, it’s always too much for their kind.

Aaron nods, “Didn’t you ever go home?”

Robert shifts uncomfortably, “Not until now.”

Aaron looks at him, really looks at him and Robert wants to run away. He’s admitted too much. He tries to fob it off, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Course it does.”

“It doesn’t when your brother is the one who had you murdered.”

That stops Aaron from grabbing his beer bottle from the table. Robert downs his whiskey that was resting in his hand, lets the burn tickle him as he gets up to leave the room. Let him go to his bedroom and be free of it.

“Robert,” Aaron calls after him, “you’re right, it doesn’t matter.”

 _Your name, your family, where you came from. None of it matters_.

He still walks away.

 

~*~

 

Robert thinks about Aaron as he’s nudging Lawrence White towards more increasingly risky deals, feeding off his sin tinged happiness when they work and the bitter hate of when they fall through. He’s particularly fond of that. He can almost see the blackness spreading on the man’s soul, and it speaks a lot to who Robert was in life. How he wanted more than he had, and he was more than willing to do whatever it took to get it.

His focus slides back with just as much ease as it flitted to the Whites. There has to be a reason that Aaron was granted immortality as angel despite his end. He thinks about it still as he enters the portacabin site where he’s been building his base of operations. There’s a secret panelled door that none but him, and maybe Aaron, can see. It slides open and takes him down to Hell.

The oppressive heat is generic, Robert takes off his jacket more because the fabric is bothering him than he’s hot. He’s been down here enough times to know what he’s getting into. He passes empty rooms waiting for souls to be tortured of their own volition. Most don’t accept that it’s their own guilt that damns them, and if they don’t feel it, the pain they inflict on others traps them.

He searches through old archives, boxes and boxes, truly hellish amounts, and he finds record after record of suicide turned demons. The catalyst for an immortal change is always death, but factors leading up to it are rare. Violent murder, as in Robert’s case, is one, only if the soul has a strong enough will to overcome the pain of their death and transformation. Sexual assault victims are high because they rarely find justice in life, so their demonic presence is often to turn vigilante and murder their oppressors and anyone who acts in the same manner. Then finally, suicides. The violence of the self is the most damaging as they rip into the very design of their own souls. Most don’t survive and those that do tend to become the most depraved demons, their humanity broken in a fundamental way. Aaron is none of those things. He is a God touched angel with almost entirely pure white wings. He _wants_ in a way only humans, and demons, do.

He is unexplainable, and Robert wonders if he should give up trying. He also ignores the tug at the pit of his cold, dead heart.

 

~*~

 

After their stumble regarding Robert’s death, Aaron is more hesitant with him. More careful about what he says even though they spend no less time together, and Robert hates it. It comes to head when Aaron offers to show him his own life. Certain angels with the aptitude to look outside themselves can show others what they see, what they experience, but these are only the most introspect, most forgiving of angels, and so they are very few. Aaron must have excelled, Robert decides as they sit on his bed.

It’s the first time he’s been invited to Aaron’s home. Definitely the first time to his bed, but for what he plans to do, it’s easier, in case Robert has an adverse reaction.

Robert sits with his back straight, knee up and the other resting on the floor as he faces Aaron, his arms held out for him to touch his wrists. Aaron stops and starts like he changes his mind and changes it back, so Robert sits back a bit, taking his hands away.

“Don’t do this because you think you have to.”

Aaron fidgets where he sits, his eyes determined, “I’m not.”

Robert is entirely sure that Aaron would say he wasn’t on fire while half his clothes burned off just to be contrary.

There is more of a mental struggle until Aaron grabs Robert’s wrists and holds them tightly. He catches a spark of fear in his eyes before everything blurs like wading into a pool with nothing to protect his eyes.

When it clears, he sees a little boy, so full of hope and kindness, and Robert watches as he falters, corrupted by others vile sin, his purity stained forever with woe. It never lets up. It is never kind to him until he decides to choose his own fate. His own end. Robert is left with the lingering image of blood as it spills on the Earth, life leaving, and grace being born.

He can feel how deep Aaron’s self-imposed shame runs now, how he blames himself for how and what he has become, and Robert wants to cut it out, burn it with everything that he is. He doesn’t deal with those types of souls, but he knows the agonies they are forced to endure. It’s not enough, but it’s something.

He also takes Aaron’s face in his hands and kisses him lightly, giving him every opportunity to back away. He does.

“You don’t mean it.” Aaron tells him as he pushes Robert’s hands off his face.

_You’re a demon, you lie. How could anyone, even you, care about me?_

Robert turns his palms up and leaves them, him, open to Aaron’s gaze, if he wants to see him. Fair is fair, and Robert doesn’t want to hide.

Except Aaron doesn’t take anything from Robert, he only gives. He hesitantly moves back in, almost kissing Robert, but waiting to be told he can. Robert nods, he couldn’t think of anything better, and Aaron’s there, hovering and pressing kisses that get longer as time passes. Robert makes a grab for him, but Aaron gets up, stroking Robert’s arm as he goes. He’s smiling when he picks up his drink and shots it before walking over to window.

Robert watches, hoping he’s right about where this is headed. He has never penetrated divinity and he has never welcomed it into himself either. He lays himself out on the bed, fingers rippling over soft cotton. It’s modest, nothing he would have chosen, but it’s Aaron’s, so he wants it. Wants him. He’s leaning against the window, his wings glistening in the paler light of the moon. Robert has never thought that beautiful, the high and mighty of an angel bathed in natural light the way artists constantly wank over them in portraits, but he finds he understands it now. Desires it too.

Aaron folds his wings further in, intent on hiding them, appearing as human as Robert can, and Robert shakes his head. He doesn’t want Aaron to deny a thing. He wonders how many men he’s had to lie to keep his secret, to hide all of what makes him stunning, just to make himself appear mundane. He doesn’t believe it. Not really. There is no way of looking into Aaron’s eyes and not seeing the spark of God. It isn’t holy, his gaze, but it is honest.

“Take off your clothes,” Robert tells him as he unbuckles his belt and unzips his trousers. He leaves them open and touches nothing else, Aaron’s skin far more interesting to him. Some angels, most that Robert has known, are flawless, not one imperfection touches their body, so to see what must have been Aaron’s human scars is unnerving. It’s a reminder that he is much more than Robert will ever be.

Still, his muscles are drawn and tight underneath his skin as he uses them to remove the last of his clothing and Robert feels the fire of the inferno in his belly. He wants Aaron to feel it, press his hand against it and know it’s for him. But that’s not what’s between them. This is simple magnetism. The natural opposition of their natures bound in the desire of their physical forms. He finds he doesn’t lie to Aaron, change himself in any way that he sometimes does with others. He is as he was in life, down to the scar on his knee from where he fell from his horse as a child.

“They say I’m sinful, but I don’t think they understood when they made you.” Robert tells Aaron as he sits up to grasps his hip and pull him down on the bed.

Aaron shakes his head, “Don’t.”

 _Don’t bring that here. Don’t taint that with this_.

 **_No_ ** _._

 _Don’t taint_ **_us_** _with that_.

Robert leans over and kisses Aaron’s uppermost scar, high on his pectoral muscle and nudges the skin with his nose, “How else am I supposed to appreciate you?” He flicks his tongue out and Aaron draws in a breath.

“How else will you know how much I want you?”

He lets his hand cup over Aaron, who bites his lip and tries not to look down.

“Come on, take yours off too.” He pushes, but Robert shakes his head.

It doesn’t take a lot for Aaron to thicken in his hand, to stroke the soft, velvety skin so that it’s hot in his grasp. He kisses the tip of it before he sits up and unbuttons his shirt. It’s right there for the world to see, the scar that took his life. Aaron traces it with his index finger, runs over it a second time with his middle. It used to be raised and ugly, an open mess that only years in the pit cauterised it closed. Now, it’s smooth and seamless, almost like a scar for one of those modern day bullets humans are so fond of.

Something inside him recognises the kind touch, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers. He shakes it off with his shirt and lays back down on Aaron’s body, welcoming the heat of him as he traces his ribs with light fingers. He doesn’t deny his wings either, they’re most sensitive at the edges and Aaron trembles when Robert watches his index finger comb and part through the feathers. It must be too intense because Aaron pushes his hand away and pulls him down for an eager kiss as he shoves Robert’s trousers down and Robert shakes them the last bit off his ankles.

Like demons, angels don’t feel pain the same way humans do, so Aaron’s confusion to Robert’s assertion to the necessity of lube was unavoidable.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t feel good either.” He knows. He can take it, inoculated to pain by experiencing so much of it, but he won’t do that to Aaron.

It occurs to Robert in that moment that Aaron doesn’t know any better.

“Do you trust me?”

Aaron looks at him sceptically, but he nods.

Robert scoops him up and drops him gently onto his back, pushing his knees up and then further still, his feet almost by his ears when he stretches his legs out.

“ _Robert_.”

It’s not a warning or even a no, but a confused call. He waits, and Aaron doesn’t move away, so he covers Aaron’s skin with his mouth, licking wetly and pressing against thick muscle as Aaron tries to claw at his hands.

It eases with time, his chin is soaked, and he has never enjoyed anything more. Aaron is breathing through his nose, audible to Robert’s ears, and his throat vibrating with low moans and whines that never seem to cease. Robert eases him down, his fingers back on his cock while Aaron shakes a little bit with sensitivity.

Robert, on the other hand, likes a bit of pain, if it’s the right kind. With Aaron laid out almost like a starfish, his wings spread almost like a woman’s hair might be, he can’t deny his own wants. He climbs up over Aaron’s hips, spits on his palm and starts work Aaron inside himself. Aaron’s hands are immediate, pinching his hips as a warm feeling engulfs Robert. His eyes fly up to Aaron’s and there is a gentle nod. He has taken Robert’s pain, drained it from him and left only a coy heat that builds as he slowly works himself on and off Aaron.

An angel helping a demon. An angel giving and sharing pleasure with an abomination. It shouldn’t be, but Robert feels like it shouldn’t be anything else. Aaron’s hand skates across his stomach, rubbing higher up than his dick and he thinks he should hate it, how he’s so blatantly denied. Instead, he moves to hold his hand over Aaron’s and press his palm down tighter; let him feel how their bodies undulate together, how this is them together. A haze falls on Robert, like light is burnishing gold around the edges of his mind and he looks down at Aaron, his eyes are bright, brighter than before.

“You’re—”

Aaron closes his eyes and shakes his head.

Robert leans down on him, brushes his thumb against Aaron’s cheek, “Don’t hide. I can feel it inside me. _You_. Inside me.”

It sounds cliché, but he doubts any of them ever made love to an angel. He hates those words, human notions placed on biological imperatives, but he has no words for the connection being fostered here.

“You’re here too.” Aaron tells him, his heel of his palm digging into his chest. “It’s like fire, burning me up.”

“Don’t burn.” Robert feels fear pulse in chest. Others have. Others professing love and fidelity have burned in their own sin from just a kiss from Robert.

“I won’t.”

 _Oh god, please don’t_.

Robert shakes his head. He feels strange, his body is rocking towards its peak, but his brain is fizzing. He puts his hands down on Aaron’s stomach and rolls of to the side. Everything gets colder and clearer the moment his back touches the duvet.

Aaron chokes like something has been severed from him and maybe it has. It feels like a tether between them has be cut and everything is so much starker now because of it. Aaron turns on his side, his hand flat over Robert’s scar. It jostles him and brings him back into reality, jerking away to stand up.

“Robert?”

“I can’t do this.”

He remembers it. Way back when inside his mind, gold glinting in the sun, soft lips and a kind smile. He loved. He was in love. Only it pales to what he feels here, how even now part of him yearns to reconnect with Aaron, to complete the bond. It makes him angry.

“What did you do?”

“Do?”

“You angels with your tricks. Calling us demons liars, but you’re the worst. Telling humans there’s a God. There’s nothing. Just pain and suffering because ‘God’ doesn’t give a crap about you. If He did, He would have saved you before you tore yourself to shreds.”

Aaron’s jaw sets, his wings covering his nakedness. “Get out.”

Robert feels like ice inside. He’s frozen, unable to move, unable to take it back. “Aaron.”

“Maybe God never did anything for you because you never did anything worth looking at.”

Aaron’s expression goes to angry to apologetic instantly, but the damage is done, to both of them. They’re either going to burn together as one single flame, or they’re going to take half the world with them.

 

~*~

 

Robert finds the absence of Aaron in his days is unbearable. He feels the sliver of whatever it was he felt between their bodies still sitting inside his heart days after their fight. Sometimes it hums inside him and if he reaches out and touches it, he can feel Aaron inside him just like he did that night. He descends into Hell to give his monthly report and the fire singes him more than it has in decades.

“Robert?” Leyla looks up at him while holding her projects clipboard. He’d snipe at her normally about how many marriages she’s always helping fail, but he doesn’t have it in him today. He feels weak and lethargic.

“Hmm?”

“I asked if you were alright.” She takes his temperature with a hand on his forehead like they both aren’t demons sitting in the bowels of a fire pit. She was always his favourite demoness. He smiles and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze.

“I’m okay. Just tired. Lots of sinning today.”

Leyla oohs and smiles at him, “Do tell.”

He finds that he can’t recall. Revulsion riles up in his stomach and he thinks he’s going to be sick. He’s being pulled, yanked by what feels like a fish hook in his spine, up and up, away from here.

So, he goes, it gets easier when he gets back to the earthly realm, his nausea tamped down, but fear pulses in him alongside it when he realises his feelings aren’t _his_ feelings. After that he runs.

 

Aaron’s been left in the forest, he likes to run to clear his head, and Robert stumbles over the rocks as he gets himself down to where Aaron is lying. He’s in a bad way, Robert doesn’t know where to touch that won’t hurt so he ignores all of it and picks Aaron up anyway. His wing is bent at a wrong angle and half skinned, his arm is shredded with claws, it has all the hallmarks of Hell.

“I’m so sorry.” Robert leans his forehead against Aaron’s, who moans softly in pain. He’ll feel this, there’s no way he can’t.

“It wasn’t you. I knew it weren’t you.” Aaron nods as tears leak from where he has his eyes squeezed so tightly shut.

 _It wasn’t you_. But someone wanted it to be him, or look like him.

 

~*~

 

He doesn’t take Aaron home, but to his flat. He has wards here that will protect them both, but mostly Aaron. He lights a smoking bowl and leaves it in his doorway for it to do its thing.

Aaron has peeled off as much of his torn clothing as he can, and Robert has to help him the rest of the way before he stands behind him in the shower in case he falls. His wings, his beautiful white wings, are covered in blood and Robert can feel the spine of some of layers when he brushes his fingers over wrecked skin. Aaron winces and pulls away from him and he can’t blame him for that.

“How do I help you?” He asks quietly. Desperately. Aaron turns to him with soft eyes and wraps his arms around Robert’s waist, his head dropping onto his shoulder and Aaron’s wings resting limply over his own back. The shower beats down on him, and it can’t be comfortable, stabbing the open wounds like that, but when he tries to move him, Aaron grumbles and holds on tighter.

“Feels better here.”

He says it and Robert doesn’t move. Not an inch.

It’s remarkable how fast he heals. Robert leaves him to sleep in his bed while he makes a cup of coffee, heating up lasagne, something he has learned to love about humanity, and makes Aaron some toast. He likes other things, but he seems to enjoy this with butter the most. He presents it to Aaron with a cup of tea before he catches his hand.

“Thanks.”

He couldn’t have gone home in that state. His secret would have been revealed. He’d either have been reviled or put on as a sideshow and they both know it. Humans cannot bear what is beyond their comprehension.

Still. It wasn’t a choice for Robert: “Always.”

 

This time, Robert goes into it with his eyes wide open. He feels exactly where the tether begins inside him and how it reaches out to touch Aaron.

Aaron’s weak still, but Robert can’t not kiss him. He leans over him and gently takes his mouth, kissing over it, paying attention to both lips, separately and together. He even slips his tongue inside to see if he tastes the same, he does. Like hot buttered toast, but also honey. Aaron opens up more and Robert takes it as a sign to delve in further, his hand cupping Aaron’s face to tilt it up to his own. He eases off to Aaron’s little groan of protest and it makes him smile.

“Try again later, flyboy.”

Aaron tries it with a cheeky hand slipped down the waistband of Robert’s pyjamas and he isn’t immune to it, he hisses and wants more, but he won’t risk Aaron’s health for it, so he stands back up. Aaron looks entirely put out by the whole thing and sulks while he drinks his tea.

“You know what all this is about?” Aaron hedges, clearly unsure if Robert will tell him anything, but Robert won’t lie, “I’m not sure, but I have a pretty good idea.”

“We gonna talk about what happened? Before.”

Robert takes Aaron’s mug as he’s finished with it and takes his plate to go and put them in the sink.

“Robert.”

The tether pulls taut again. Robert can’t deny anymore that he’s attached to Aaron both emotionally and metaphysically. He walks back into the bedroom and fiddles with things on his bedside table as he talks.

“You’re an angel. You shouldn’t want this with me. I’m not… _good_.”

“I’m not an angel though, am I? I’m a mistake.”

He stands and faces Aaron, “Aaron, I didn’t mean—”

“You were right, though. Suicides don’t get into heaven. Suicides don’t get immortality.”

“I guess it means He wants more for you.”

Aaron stops a second, he wraps his hand around Robert’s thigh, from the inside round, just to connect to him and the string between them flares and Robert knows in that second that Aaron feels it just as strongly as he does. Aaron looks at him speculatively and Robert feels himself withdraw at the examination.

“What?”

“Nothin’.”

Aaron still tugs on his pyjama leg, and Robert goes easily, pressing their lips together before laying back down and cuddling Aaron up in his arms. His wings are already looking tons better, they might even be healed by nightfall if Aaron can stay in bed that long.

 

~*~

 

Robert stays with him as long as he can, but eventually he leaves Aaron in bed asleep to go back down to Hell. He’s got exactly three guesses as to who it is that did this and all of them are Ross Barton. Upper level demon, and his murderer all those centuries ago. The claw marks alone are his trademark, his own deep-seated love of violence in every kill.

“Robbie!” He announces when Robert opens his office door. It’s a pretence, he’s common as dirt and he can dress it up anyway he likes, he’s still dirt.

There’s no other way to do this but to out himself and Aaron, but he doesn’t care. He wants it understood.

“Stay away from him.”

“The angel? The enemy? The slaughterer of our kind?”

“Call it whatever you like, but this is about you and me.” And the woman Ross loved, the one Robert took in recompense for his death. “Fair is fair, right.”

Ross looks at him smugly, “Honestly, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.”

Robert thinks back to the blood and the pain Aaron must have felt and his hands lick with angry fire.

“Go ahead, go after him then. He is Debbie’s cousin after all.”

 _Bullseye_.

“She has been reincarnated and for some inane reason she likes you again. Don’t imagine she’ll keep liking you if she finds out you knocked about her cousin. Actually, I think I’ll tell her anyway.”

“I’ll kill you. Again.”

“Go ahead.” He spits it like venom, but his heart cries alongside it: _just don’t touch him_. He doesn’t stay for Ross’s reply or how he lunges for Robert to try to silence him. He has his wards, he has a stronger mind than Ross. He will prevail, he has to.

 

~*~

 

Aaron looks upset with him when he gets back.

“Ross Barton?”

He shouldn’t know that. Shouldn’t be able to know that, but they both look down at their chests. It’s almost visible when they focus on it, the thick red ghostly connection between their breastbones, and it pulses more strongly with every moment that goes by. Robert looks down at Aaron where he’s sitting on Robert’s bed still, and how he cocks his head in question. Robert steps forward cradles the back of Aaron’s head in his hand as he tips him back, careful of his wings as he lays down on Aaron’s body, their lips catching gently before he noses under Aaron’s jaw. Aaron fumbles with Robert’s belt and pushes his trousers down as much as he’s able and gets Robert’s borrowed pyjamas off his hips as they sigh where their skin touches. Robert pushes against the crease of Aaron’s hip and keeps kissing him, pressing his tongue inside Aaron’s mouth, seeking him inside of it, curling his tongue to draw him out.

Aaron answers him by pushing back, hands grabbing Robert’s arse and holding him tightly as their groins rub together, heating up and hardening with the stimulation. Robert tries to roll off to get inside his drawer, but Aaron shakes his head, digs his fingers in tighter.

“Don’t. Just stay.”

Robert nods, breathes harshly against Aaron’s cheek as he drives himself forward, keeping his belly down to drag against Aaron and draw out the tiny hitches that surrender into moans. He spits on his hand and spreads it between them, and Aaron hooks his ankles behind Robert’s calves as he starts to move against him, their bodies mirror images of one and another. Aaron grips him impossibly tight and keens before he spills between them. Robert has never seen anything more beautiful.

“I love you.” He whispers, dragging his hips through Aaron’s come and getting a hand around himself to stroke himself to his own end. He drips over Aaron’s belly button as he shakes and Aaron’s hands skate over his arms, cup his neck and pull him down for one last kiss. Aaron doesn’t say the words, but they’re there, in his tenderness and his trembling fingertips as they part.

Something solidifies in him to even acknowledge the words, words for an emotion that he doesn’t even know he truly felt when he was alive. And Aaron just seems to know how to comfort him in his simplicity. He makes Robert lie back down on his stomach and ignore the way their come is drying and sticking them together. He rubs Robert’s back in soothing motions, it’s the smallest act of kindness that Robert has ever felt, but also the best.

 _In the arms of his angel._ He snorts and chuckles to himself at the thought, and the song. Aaron pokes him to find out what’s so funny and he just shakes his head. _It’s nothing. Nothing at all_.

 

When they wake up, Robert makes breakfast, endures all of Aaron’s weird habits. _No, bread is not considered a suitable mop, Aaron_. Both of them are warm and fulfilled as Robert hooks his foot around Aaron’s ankle just to feel him there.

Everything feels full as they sit there drinking their tea. Full of possibilities, full of feeling. Robert gets up from his chair and gives Aaron a little kiss because he wants to, and he can. He smiles against Aaron’s lips and it just widens when Aaron kisses that smile back.

He nicks off for a biscuit out of the barrel when he realises it’s empty. Aaron shakes his head, “We can’t ‘ave that.”

Robert sighs, dramatically, “The things I do for you.”

Aaron is mostly healed up, but of the two of them he is divested of the most clothes, his wings on full display and attempting to rip any shirt that Robert offers him. He thinks this is Aaron’s way of saying he doesn’t like Robert’s shirts.

“Make it worth your while.” Aaron tells him as he smirks behind his cup.                                         

Robert looks him up and down, and Aaron doesn’t flinch, if anything he widens his legs a little and welcomes Robert’s gaze further. He wants that mouth, he’s decided. Smug and biscuit goal orientated as it is.

“Alright, any requests?”

Aaron hums, “No, just hurry up.”

They both snort, and Robert grabs a jumper and his keys before he leaves.

 

~*~

He’s grabbing that packet of biscuits from the shop when Ross comes for him.

Robert feels the air that passes him before he feels the knife plunge into his back. Hell tipped, of course. His spine is severed under the force of it piercing his body, and he falls inert in the street. Blood pools outside of him quickly and he feels the cold seeping inside his skin as he tries to get himself up. Everything is shot. It makes his heart pump harder, more sluggishly, as it tries to combat the hellish poison, but it can’t. It might be made of it, but it can’t transcend it. He hears a shout and feels fire. It’s not like his, it’s white and pure, and he can just about turn his head to see Aaron.

He moans his objections, only they’re lost in the clash of blade on blade. He is everything an angel should be. Good, kind, and righteous. Robert’s tears are hot on his cheeks. He wishes he could have known him properly, when he was just a lonely boy and Robert was one too.

He cries silently because he feels it this time. What it’s like to leave a world where there’s someone you love to be left behind. He wants to spare Aaron this pain, he wants to live, but it’s too late. His body gives up as Aaron gets bloody hands under his head and side as he turns him over.

“Robert, come on. Come on.” He’s pleading, and Robert hears him in that far away place, his eyes drooping. “ _Robert!_ ”

He dies.

But the thread doesn’t snap.

 

~*~

 

Everything feels gauzy and warm, he tucks himself further into the blankets he’s wrapped up in until his nose touches bare skin. His eyes fly open and he sees the long line of a man’s back, two identical scars on his shoulders. Like something was ripped from him and it scarred over harshly. His hair is dark, and Robert holds his breath.

“Aaron?” He whispers, in case he’s wrong. In case he isn’t where he thinks he is. In case everything is about to go very wrong.

Aaron turns quickly when he hears Robert’s voice.

“You don’t have any wings.” Robert tells him as Aaron grabs his arm and squeezes it with his hand.

“You’re not dead.”

Robert frowns, “I am. I felt it.”

He looks down at his chest and there’s nothing but his bullet shaped scar. He tries to summon his energy, but nothing happens. He sits up, Aaron going with him.

“I have to be dead, I don’t have any power.”

“I don’t have any wings.” Aaron says, mostly to himself.  He grabs some of Robert’s skin on his hip and pulls on it.

Robert shoves him off, “ _Ow_.”

“Yeah, ow.” Aaron looks entirely too pleased with himself and Robert finally clicks it too. He jabs a finger into Aaron’s stomach and he oofs as the air pushes out of him and he’s grinning like mad. He tackles Robert with an arm around his shoulders and one around his waist as he knocks him back on the bed.

“We’re human.” Aaron tells him like he doesn’t know, his face lit up in a soft happy smile that Robert would give anything to keep. It feels strange to have those feels now. Everything feels magnified and loud the moment he lets it in, accepts his humanity and he knows his face falls and Aaron catches him with a thumb under his chin to stop him looking down.

“You were an angel. I—” He pulls away from Aaron’s touch and swings his legs so that he’s sitting on the side of what he now realises is his bed, “wasn’t.”

Guilt comes crashing down on Robert like a waterfall and he’s left drowning at the bottom, until Aaron grabs his hand and it immediately eases. He laces their fingers together and everything settles inside him.

It’s like everything is open, things he’d forgotten, things he’s pushed out and away, are resurfacing with perfect clarity.

“I killed my brother’s wife. That’s why he summoned Ross.”

“What?”

“Her name was Katie. I loved her once too, even asked her to marry me.” Robert puts a name and a true face to the glint of gold in his memory, his almost love. “She chose my brother. She loved him more.”

“And you,” Aaron struggles with the words, “killed her.”

He doesn’t let go of Robert’s hand, but Robert stares at them like he expects him too, “It was an accident. She fell, but it was my fault. We were fighting.”

“That’s not your fault.” Aaron tells him, squeezing his fingers.

“Well then, who else’s is it?” He feels his own natural temper flare back to life. It’s not smooth like when he was a demon, it has jagged edges and it hooks inside him and feels entirely too personal.

“Robert.” Aaron’s voice is kind, but small. He isn’t the only one who has been rushed with feelings about their human life. About what was done to them.

“Are you okay?” Robert asks, turning back around to wrap Aaron up in his arms. He shakes his head no.

“It was a long time ago.” Aaron muffles against Robert’s chest before he sighs.

“It still hurts, but we’ll get through it.”

 _If they can figure out what **it** is_.

 

~*~

 

Before anything else, they realise that without Robert’s demon powers, his wards don’t work. It means that Ross is coming for them when he realises that Robert isn’t dead, if he hasn’t already.

“Go.” He tells Aaron as he pulls the chest he keeps out from under his bed.

Aaron looks at him with a face like thunder, “Are you kiddin’ me?”

“Aaron, we’re both human. He’s a demon. He killed me twice already, I’m not—”

A strong hand grabs Robert’s arm and drags him up, “I love you and I’m not gonna let you die alone.”

Robert feels his chest cave in a little at the words. He doesn’t think Aaron knew he said them as his face pales a little and then turns determined.

“I mean it, Robert, we do it together.”

He opens the lid and offers Aaron a knife. “You save yourself first. That’s all I want.”

“Same.”

 

There’s no point in running, they’ll just be found, so they spend what time they think they have left talking about what their lives, both lives, were like. They trade stories about siblings, Aaron misses Liv so much, but she isn’t old enough yet in this life for him to meet her. He’s waiting though, soon. Soon she’ll be old enough. Or she would have been.

“Aaron, you should be with her.”

“I ain’t leaving ya.”

Robert feels his heart swell and he grabs Aaron’s hand, “I’m not leaving you. Doesn’t mean you have to die for me.”

“Don’t mean he’s gonna spare me if you do.” Aaron counters. “Face it, you’re stuck with me.”

“I’m so glad I met you.” It’s cheesy and entirely too human in sentiment, Robert finds, but he needs Aaron to know how happy he is.

“Me too. Eternity was boring as—”

“Oi.”

They share a kiss, take each other to bed, and get dressed again after because nothing has changed. It’s the same cycle over and over, the past coming to call and death being behind the door.

 _No_. What’s different is _them_.

 

 

The door busts in and Robert is pretty ineffectual, not really having the physical skill to fight, but he manages to distract Ross by leaping on him long enough for Aaron to take a swipe at his side. He doesn’t have the strength to back it up now and it only scratches him rather than gouges. He backhands Aaron’s face, throws Robert off and steps on his wrist when he reaches for his knife. He feels the bones crunch under Ross’s heel as he kicks away the knife with his other shoe.

“Shoulda stayed away, eh, pretty boy.”

Robert grunts, gritting his teeth and takes his shot to stab Ross in the foot with his other knife. It goes through and pierces Robert’s wrist, the poison a thousand times hotter to his human system than his demonic one.

“What did you—?”

Ross figures it out and pulls the knife away, it’s too late, he’s going to die. They both are. He makes with the knife towards Aaron, and Robert rolls on his side, “No!”

But there’s light. So much light.

Wings protect his eyes as Ross is cracked and exploded by its sheer force. His wrist no longer throbs, and he can’t feel fire in his veins. He weakly pushes himself to his feet, Aaron looking at him from the other side of the room.

Robert ignores everything and stumbles towards Aaron, hugging him tightly and breathing against the skin of his temple.

“ _Now_ ,” is all the angel says to them as Robert turns around and he’s about to go off on one about timing when Aaron grabs his arm.

“I don’t forgive you.” He tells it, its form androgynous. Robert steps back to let whatever this is happen. “I was so alone, for so long. Too long.”

Aaron’s crying, not a lot, just simple tears tracking on his cheeks, his newfound emotions just as high strung as Robert’s right now, “But thanks.”

He lets Robert draw him into a hug, his face pressed in the nook of Robert’s neck as he holds his waist, the angel blinked out of existence. “Friend of yours?”

“That was the angel that changed me. When I died, it kept saying not yet.”

“Not to die yet?”

He shakes his head, “Not until I met you.”

“What?” Robert’s heart pounds.

“Figure it out, Robert. It all started up again; me, Ross, _you_ when you came home.”

He pulls away to look at Aaron’s face. He thinks that Aaron is right. He was the one who left Emmerdale what feels like an eon ago, never to return, and now everything has fallen into place so that he, and Aaron, get a second chance at a life they were denied, a human one. He couples it with the fact that the thread that had saved his life hums quietly in the back of his mind, but when he tries to trace it with a mental finger, it buzzes him away. It’s fading. Not in strength, but his ability to touch it.

“It’ll fade away.” He says, _the world we knew_. Aaron gets it, he nods and grabs Robert’s hand.

“We don’t need it.”

“No, we don’t.” Robert smiles and kisses Aaron’s forehead. “So, you wanna grab dinner?”

Aaron deadpans him in that way he does, “You what? You’re told we’re meant to be together, by design or summat, and you’re offering me dinner? At least buy me a beer as well.”

“Will you put out?” He bites his lip and Aaron laughs, “Yeah g’on. I’m in the mood.”

“Sorted.” Robert lets Aaron’s hand go to cup both hands against his cheeks for a kiss. It’s the only thing that doesn’t feel entirely different. He feels the fizz, the want and the underlying love like he’s always felt this way. Maybe he has, maybe his demonic nature was just clouding that simple truth.  It doesn’t matter now, it’s done with, and he isn’t going to waste his second chance.

Not again.


End file.
